A New and Compelling Collaboration to Promote Unity and Solidarity Against Threats to Our Democracy.
by Peter Dickstein
Three years ago, I leased a Tesla Model Y. I was excited about weaning myself from a fossil fuel-burning car and loved everything about my new EV (and still do). Then Elon lost it, Trump was elected, and DOGE began their indiscriminate, misguided, and irresponsible rout of critically important government departments/programs and counter-productive/cruel terminations of highly capable government employees.
A pithy bumper sticker on my Tesla seemed insufficient. I felt that I needed to do something more public and impactful to express my dismay, disapproval, and disdain around the cynical and hostile billionaire takeover of our government, the capitulation of elected and appointed officials to those billionaires, and the consequent existential threats to our democracy.
My and my team’s thoughts turned to words and symbols that could help promote unity and solidarity among those of us fighting the self-serving individuals who pose grave dangers to our democracy and world stability. We felt that the descriptors of these individuals--Robber Barons, Oligarchs, and Tech Bros--were, at best, anachronistic, culturally inappropriate, and narrow. We wanted to create a unique, situationally specific, and contemporary word to define the bad actors in this horrific show.
We wanted the new word and symbol to be catchy, memorable, amusing, and appropriately ominous, and ultimately to become an iconic and “sticky” graphic that could facilitate real change. We hoped that, if tagged with the new word and symbol, these individuals could more easily and quickly be identified, marginalized from the mainstream political landscape, and relegated to the fringes where their influence would be minimized. More specifically and looking ahead to the next election cycle in 2026, we imagined that an association with the new icon might render aspiring politicians and political appointees less electable or less appointable.
The word we created was ENUFELON. While it is obviously inspired by Elon Musk and an intentional triple-entrendre, it is not Elon-specific. It is a noun with the following two generic and interconnected definitions:
1. An ultra-wealthy individual who buys politicians and political influence for self-benefit.
2. A politician who accepts financial support from ultra-wealthy individuals in exchange for political favors.
We trademarked ENUFELON so that it couldn’t be legally appropriated or used by others, and we created a website (www.enufelon.com) where people could learn about the concept and start participating by incorporating ENUFELON into everyday political discourse. We established an online store that offers products featuring the ENUFELON logo and help facilitate/accelerate awareness of the new descriptor.
We are partnering with politically aligned allies like Indivisible to encourage and spread the use of ENUFELON. Ultimately, we hope to provide financial support to such organizations based on sales of our fun and catchy ENUFELON merch.
We hope that ENUFELON will contribute to the goals of Indivisible Santa Fe and other organizations as they work towards our shared vision of a healthy and durable democracy.
